Police officers and teenagers in Overland Park, Kansas, gathered this week to play basketball and build relationships amid nationwide calls to defund the police.
“Overland Park police officers met up with the group of teens to have a discussion about excessive force. Neighbors said they hope the officers will see the kids as having bright futures, and they also hope the kids see the cops as honest public servants,” according to Fox 4.
In a Facebook post on June 12, the department shared photos of the officers shooting hoops with the young men:
Some of our Officers made a BIG mistake by trying to establish a, "basketball team". These Officers then found a group…
Posted by Overland Park Police Department on Friday, June 12, 2020
“We did lose ALL of the games. However we made new friends, except for the one player that DUNKED on our officer. LOL,” the post read.
Thursday, the department tweeted photos of a second basketball game the officers played with the teenagers:
Round 2: We put on shorts, recruited better players (officers), consumed energy drinks before the game, rubbed down with ointment and wore tennis shoes but we STILL lost (only by two points this time). @MayorGerlach are you busy next week? pic.twitter.com/2FTZn5WJnj
— Overland Park Police (@OverlandPark_PD) June 18, 2020
In testimony delivered on June 10 to the House Committee on the Judiciary, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research fellow Heather Mac Donald urged government leaders to reject the movement to defund the police.
“This committee should denounce the defunding of police agencies. Shrinking their resources will result in poorer service to the law-abiding residents of high crime areas,” she stated.
Mac Donald continued:
There are bad cops of all races who must be removed. But the overwhelming majority of officers are motivated by a desire to help the most vulnerable among us. Though many officers work under unimaginable conditions, encountering the worst consequences of pervasive family breakdown, they continue to believe fervently in the good people who support them. If this mania of cop hatred is not quelled, those good people will suffer further and the nation’s cities will become places of fear and decay.
At the basketball game on Thursday, one resident encouraged people to lead by example if they wanted to see their neighborhoods come together.
“I think it starts with us and we have to be the leaders and the examples for others so we can start having more events like this to where we’re creating unity in our communities,” she concluded.
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